ARCH 466: Materials/This research seminar examines advances in the technologies that affect the practice of architecture. The course will investigate leading technologies, processes and applications and their role in building design and production.

Students will be visiting and documenting a number of innovative building projects in order to evaluate their relative success or failure, and comment upon the viability of adopting their basic principles in their own work. The objective is to enable the student to understand the role of new materials, assemblies and systems as a parameter of creating high performance architecture in different contexts.

The object of the course is not solely expository, but also critical. The aim is not only to showcase technical strategies and developments, but also to investigate them in terms of their appropriateness and cost (both real and cultural). We are interested in a discussion of the role of sustainable technologies and their impact on the customs and prevailing conditions of the built environment.The program will spend four weeks traveling in Germany and Denmark to immerse students in contemporary architecture, landscapes, and urbanism. Tours will stress sustainable technologies, focusing on substantial new projects in Berlin and its surroundings that showcase best practices and some of the most advanced work in sustainability occurring in Europe today.


ARCH 468: The traveling summer course is a freehand exercise and exploration teaching freehand sketching, perspective and the art of analytic drawing as a means to convey architectural spatial ideas. The most successful architecture drawings express the pure concept of a space and need to have a clear complexity of thought behind them. The belief is that architects should have competence in expressing thought through sketch; complex or simplistic free hand techniques need to have a confidence to get the idea across to the viewer. This course teaches several free hand drawing techniques including pencil, pen, pastel and watercolor mediums with group and individual instruction. Requirements will include journal sketch book as well as finished renderings. The four week course will be based in Berlin Germany, but will include drawing excursions around Germany and Denmark .